It is common and well known in the art for an instrument panel of a vehicle to contain clusters of a plurality of information indicators, commonly known as telltales. It is commonly known to provide ten to thirty telltales within an instrument panel thereby heavily cluttering the instrument panel of a vehicle. The clutter of telltales limits the design and functionality of the instrument panel within the vehicle. Furthermore, increased parts and weight are required to provide for the plurality of telltales within the instrument panel including, but not limited to, light bulbs, LEDs, stencils, outlines, and other plastic or metal parts required for making the telltale. The telltale assemblies are complex with wiring and require a significant amount of installation. All of these factors increase the cost of production of including numerous telltales within the vehicle instrument panel. Bulb life, either incandescent or LED, and reliability of these bulbs provide for increased cost throughout the life of the vehicle.
Numerous devices are known which have attempted to solve the cost and performance issues as described above. Ayres (U.S. Pat. No. 6,278,424) teaches a miniature telltale module which combines a plurality of telltale functions into one unit and provides reduced cost per function. The module uses a miniature rotary actuator, an image disc having a plurality of interconnected images, icons, and a single light source. Although Ayres attempts to solve the problem of increased cost and efficiency of a plurality of telltales, Ayres does not eliminate the required extra parts for manufacturing a telltale.
It is well known in the art to provide a vehicle display screen located within the vehicle. The display screen is operable to display things such as GPS navigation, radio controls, or other vehicle controls essential to the operation of the vehicle. It is common and well known in the art at present to provide these screens in all automotive vehicles. Although it is known to provide warnings similar to telltale warnings within this vehicle display screen, it is not known to provide a replica of the vehicle the user is presently driving to illustrate the vehicle condition.
The present invention provides this new concept by disclosing the use of a replica vehicle to illustrate a vehicle condition to replace the use of a plurality of telltales within the instrument panel.